


First-Aid

by por_queeee



Category: Watchmen (2009), Watchmen (Comic)
Genre: Angst, Child Neglect, First-Aid, Friendship, Gen, Loneliness, Memory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/por_queeee/pseuds/por_queeee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rorschach deals with his own injuries as usual, and all of the baggage that comes with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First-Aid

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2009 as a prompt-fill for LJ user runninglonely; "How about Rorschach dealing with an injury alone, and feeling wistful that he has no one to help him with it?"

_"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with."_

**\- Wayne Dyer**

Rorschach’s fingers are nimble as they push the needle in, out, in, out. The slice from the topknot’s knife cinches shut easily, skin pulling together with each gentle tug of thread, blood bubbling up here and there to slowly trickle down his freckled leg. He was stupid; dodged right when he should have ducked left. The result is the six inch wound on the top of his leg, and he berates himself silently for being so weak, for putting Daniel’s life in danger by faltering after the blade’s impact instead of tackling the thug that ran at Nite Owl.

This time Daniel managed to close-line the man, sending him hurtling into a dingy puddle. Next time, Rorschach knows he won’t be so lucky. He knows that his next mistake might end with Daniel’s death, and while the possibility of his own death is tolerable, the thought of Daniel’s is not.

Rorschach fights the pain as he finishes up, swabbing away the blood that wells up under the clear surgical thread. His movements are instinctual, weaving the needle in and out of his flesh as the repetition of the motion follows some bizarre rhythm.

He ties the thread carefully, examines his handiwork. He’s done this so many times, sewn himself up in lieu of anyone else to do it for him, (he realizes with a grim amusement that he’s had to sew himself up as many times as he’s had to sew up clothing.) No, he has to do it himself, penance for his mistakes, alone like he always is. Always will be.

He cleans up a bit, disinfects the needle, placing it back in his first-aid kit, (he may be unhygienic but he’s not ignorant to the prospect of infection.) Testing his leg he walks over to the old mattress that serves as his bed, buried as it is in clothes and trash. His movements are careful, knowing better than to tear out his own stitches, and he shoves a pile of hole-eaten rags aside, sinking down onto the mattress with a strained creak of the springs and his own bones. The apartment is a hovel, a mess of empty cans and rumpled clothing, but he doesn’t care; he has better things to do, justice to dispense. There’s no time to play the housewife like Daniel does, to stringently clean a place that will never be his home, just another two-bit roof over his head.

His lids are heavy now, a combination of the last patrol and his lack of sleep the past several days. The human body is weak; he detests it, its need for rest, comfort, and sustenance proving to be a handicap. Grudgingly he lets his eyes fall shut, pulling his face off and stuffing it under the mattress with a final stroke of his fingers over the pooling blots of ink. He has to be careful, can’t risk the latest in a long line of fat whore landladies barging in while he has it on.

He traces the fresh stitches with his calloused fingers, shuddering despite his high threshold for pain. No, he doesn’t shudder because of the light prickle underneath his newly closed wound; he shudders because of the memories that claw at him, of a life spent with no one on whom to depend but himself. He’s not a nostalgic man, typically managing to dispel any such weak emotions by working his body out in the seedy alleyways until he’s sore. But something about fixing himself up always manages to unnerve him, to force him into that part of his mind he tends to leave dormant.

_“Mommy, my knee.” He whimpers, a boy of 7, knee scratched from where he took a spill on the pavement. His mother glares at him the way she always does, like he’s some piece of furniture that she’s stubbed her toe on, and she taps the ash off a cigarette that perches between her plump pale fingers._

_“Yeah, what about it?” She asks, taking a long drag of her cigarette and flipping the page of the magazine in her lap._

_Walter sniffs, rubs his dopey eyes plaintively. Sometimes she’s nice to him, sometimes she treats him good. Maybe now is one of those times. “It’s hurt.”_

_His mother’s gaze is back on her gossip rag now and she breathes out a cloud of smoke. The smell has always made Walter sick and he bites his lip. “So?” She returns flatly, probably not even listening anymore. His heart sinks, and he realizes this isn’t one of those scattered instances when she treats him with humanity._

_“Well, um… Aren’t you going to bandage it or… Or something? T-the other moms, they-“_

_His mother’s eyes shoot up and she starts to laugh in the shrill way that she does, ends up wheezing and hacking. Walter shifts uneasily as she clears her throat, chokes out a sentence. “What, you want me to kiss it better or something?”_

_Walter looks down, humiliation coloring his freckled skin. “No, I just…”_

_“Well forget it.” She cuts in, leaning back again, eyes refocusing on the magazine, cheap red lipstick staining the filter of her cigarette. “Ugly little fuck, think you can tell me how to raise you? Jesus, can’t you do anything for yourself anyways?”_

_Walter winces, tears stinging his eyes as he stares fixedly on a spot on the carpet. “Sorry ma’am.”_

_She doesn’t even look up, just snorts. At least she isn’t hitting him this time. “I have a friend visiting so you better go to your room. And stay there this time. I don’t need to loose anymore money just because by dumb-shit kid walks in and ruins the whole thing.”_

_“Yes’m.” He answers, carefully plodding away._

_That night he bandages his own knee and climbs in to bed, clutching a pillow to his ears to drown out the dull moans of his mother and her customer._

The memory is cheap, a dime a dozen as far as his life as Walter goes. He’s never had anyone, not really. As a boy in the Charleton home he had learned the mistake of letting himself think anyone could want him. Seeing Father Smith keel over, dying of a heart attack had assured him that he would be alone again after their brief friendship; the priest had been the only person he had trusted at the home, lending him books and sometimes giving him spare change to run down to the drugstore and buy a Coke. It’s with pain that he remembers the smell of the man’s study; leather bound books and crackling wood in the fire and safety. The first real taste of safety Walter had ever gotten in life.

Rorschach pulls a tattered scrap of blanket over his shoulders, trying to shove the remnants of Walter’s childhood from his head. He chalks his sudden sentimentality up to how naked he feels without his face, how wrong this unfamiliar skin is under his fingers, bumpy and rough and not his. To think that Daniel had wanted to see this, this lie, this sham of a face. He traces his fingers over the shallow cheeks, digging his stubby nails and blunt fingertips into the pale skin maliciously every now and then. No, it’s good that he hadn’t caved when Daniel had pulled off his own mask, offering a gloved hand with his ever present sappy smile. Good that he had only grunted in acknowledgement and walked away.

Daniel would have taken care of him, would have stitched him up and he knows it. It isn’t as if he hadn’t offered before, countless times following a patrol that had gone sour. Of course, Rorschach always declines, retreating home alone to lick his wounds like a feral cat. He can’t let them grow any closer than they already are, can’t let his defenses fall any more than they already have around the taller man. But the worst part is that he wants to. Just once he wants the hands that heal his cuts to be someone else’s, just once he wants somebody to utter assurances and worry about him and just once he wants that otherwise unnoticed void to be filled.

Just once, he wants to not be so alone.


End file.
